By letting a cloud services vendor store your company's files and applications online, you can easily expand in-house storage capacity and processing muscle as your business grows. Let's say you have a surge of new orders on your e-commerce system or you need to expand processing power for an application. Your vendor can boost your computing capabilities to satisfy those needs.
But there can be some risks associated with moving to the cloud. What if your vendor goes bankrupt and closes? What if its technology fails, leaving you unable to access your sensitive business data?
Migrating valuable business information to a technology vendor is a big move and can require a lot of consideration. Here, we look at three of the most important factors to consider when making the transition for your company.
1. Research the vendors.
Because it's relatively easy to offer cloud services, your choices will range from larger, established companies to unknown startups. The small players may be competent, but be sure you feel comfortable being among the first to put them to the test.
To assess vendors, ask for customer references, talk to other companies you trust and do some research online. The ideal vendor will have a strong track record for both performance and customer service.
Related: How One Small Company Outsourced IT to a Cloud-Computing Platform
For example, low latency -- the delay in moving data from one point to another -- is an important measure to check. Prompt and reliable service is critical because your cloud provider is essentially your new outside information technology department. If the vendor is slow to deal with your problems, your response time to customers also will likely suffer.
2. Be aware of legal issues.
Understand your potential legal liabilities and ensure that your cloud vendor abides by the same rules that govern your company.
Your business may have internal audit rules that demand careful handling of sensitive information. If you're in a regulated industry or do business with the government, you also may be subject to restrictions on handling data.
Related: How to Move Your Business Data into the Cloud Safely
Make sure the vendor also understands the latest privacy laws affecting your business and that it states in writing its commitment to confidentiality and its methods for securing your data. "As your data is stored in the same storage space as your neighboring tenants, you need to know how your cloud vendor will ensure that your data isn't illegally accessed," says Ian Huynh, vice president of engineering at Hubspan, a cloud services integration company.
3. Consider a back up to the cloud.
Your data will likely be just fine in the servers of a cloud services vendor. I've been using online services for years and have never lost data. But if you would like an added measure of security, you might want to regularly back up data stored in the cloud.
You could manually export your information from the cloud and back it up on-site. Or you could select a cloud backup service from such companies as Symantec, CloudBerry, KineticD and CTERA Networks, which typically allow users to keep copies of their cloud data on local servers or in other locations.
Related: Still Foggy on Cloud Computing?
Installing software on a server or local computer hard disk has been the traditional way of using computers for years. However, online software offers growing businesses a much faster, more productive and more cost effective way to create, manage and move information. Just be cautious about what software you can move securely to the cloud.
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Comments:
Do not ignore Network Security and the sure ability of your organization to duplicate the Technology the "Cloud Vendor" uses to guard against cyber-attacks. If you or your security plan is not compatible, your data is at risk, and worse case you could find yourself with your own home grown of WikiLeaks.
I couldn't agree more. (IBMer) And oh, you can assuredly trust those big guys with privacy issues!
I personally think that the more participants (i.e. Google, Microsoft, Apple etc) the more competitive the landscape becomes. Every business is different and you have to evaluate all the pros and cons before committing to such outsourcing. We were considering cloud services for a number of our I.T. needs and ended up leveraging a remote backup and disaster recovery solution from a local business that actually recommended against cloud services for some of our other processes even though they had them available for us to leverage. I can say that our experience with that solution has been a positive one so far. I found this article on the WSJ to be pretty informative http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704471904576230390670994606.html. We intend to continue evaluating these types of services through our current provider http://superiorsolution.com for now.
The "Cloud" is pure--- It is just a catchy feel good phrase that means turning your data over to a large corporation. It has all of the drawbacks of dealing with large perhaps international corporate bodies. Just make sure that the corporate groups don't swallow up your data and mishandle or lose it. Do we really need another snowjob by an aggressive corporate group using a catchy phrase to overcharge us for relatively simple technology. Can you say "Apple"?
Great article. Another point to consider – you don’t have to place your critical, sensitive data in the cloud at all. You can still benefit from a range of cloud services, which can access files and data stored on premise. Essentially a migration strategy to cloud rather than one big leap. Cloud telephony is one example where you have the option of running applications and storing data on premise or basing them in the cloud. With either model, cost savings are made by tapping into telephony resources required to process calls like; TTS, play&record, answer machine detection, conferencing, etc. Technology that typically would have a high cost associated with it (CAPEX, Installation, management, support) if purchased and installed on premise. Through the use of cloud telephony platforms such as Aculab Cloud, the cost of using such resources becomes a OPEX. You use the service on demand and pay only for what you use. This blog on cloud telephony maybe of interest http://blog.aculab.com/2011/10/chapter-2-introduction-to-cloud.html
In essence the cloud has always been there as long as you were able to upload and download to a server and work on the server. The factors that have made cloud computing a workable possibility are the technological advances, e.g. virtualisation SaaS, Paas, IaaS and the incredible increase in processing power of the modern day server. It's a good article that would apply to most new IT installations. The cloud is simply the concept
Why do I keep getting some zipped cache file when navigating this site? Opening pages in different tabs prompts my downloader (IDM) to ask if I want to download "/css/gzip/cache-1309484282-e03c2a04f14548da0271fa0a1d9b2bab.javascript.combine-cache.gzip" What's that about? Anyway, I put together some benefits here: http://www.benefits-of-cloud-computing.com/ Might have to do another page about the downsides!
The cloud is exciting, it's fascinating how technology moves forward.
Yes. Well said. The above suggested 3 points are very important to follow to get good results. Good informative post.
I put my 90% of my business into the cloud 5 years ago and it was the best business decision i ever made This article gives good advice as we used basically the same process We put the phone system with one vendor, our business apps and analysis tools with a a second, our email and web with a third, and our online backup with a fourth. We have a "cross backup" process to ensure that none of our data is only in one place. All in the cloud. We have incredible flexibility as we sometimes need to augment our staff in different locations. We can deploy our apps and phone system immediately and still maintain complete control of our data. In addition, the cloud architecture provides our disaster recovery services which were recently tested in the aftermath of hurricane Irene. We were without power and internet for several days; however, we never missed a beat and were able to service our clients remotely.
Not sure there is anything here that is not just common sense when assessing any IT services vendor, Cloud or otherwise? Check out the stability of the vendor you are thinking of using for services. That would apply to any critical business software supplier irrespective of whether it's running in the Cloud or on a local server - just because you have a licence to run software on a local server does not guarantee any continuation of support if the vendor goes bankrupt. Check out the performance? Again, you'd do that for any software solution. Check out potential legal issues? Privacy policy given as the example would apply equally to a vendor you use to dispose of sensitive hardcopy information - is not a specific Cloud issue. In fact, when managing legal issues like software licences etc Cloud can often be a lot easier due to lack of ability to copy between local machines. Consider backing up data? Really - damn, that never occurred to me in 35 years in the industry! I'm sorry, this is not an article on Cloud, and in fact creates more FUD than it might actually dispel for the unitiated.
Great article Ray. Just following up on knowing your vendor, one of the thing I always recommend is a clear escalation path when the system goes down. Help desks are fine but they are limited in their ability to solve a problem. Sometimes, when a problem has gone beyond a routine outage, you need to know who with your vendor is up the chain of command and can focus vendor resources on solving your problem. There's nothing like a phone call to a Director or VP to get people moving.